New Fairhaven cafe is designed for success

FAIRHAVEN — It's been a video store, a bead shop and most recently a House of Wicker, but if the current makeover at 230 Huttleston Ave. is any indication, this latest use may be the building's last.

BETH PERDUE

FAIRHAVEN — It's been a video store, a bead shop and most recently a House of Wicker, but if the current makeover at 230 Huttleston Ave. is any indication, this latest use may be the building's last.

So many businesses have tried and failed to make the site across from Stop & Shop a long-term success, the building owner told his latest tenant he needed a business plan before he would lease the space again.

But that didn't faze Fairhaven resident Lori Shubert.

The former designer of baby products, artist, and small business owner was happy to oblige. She is opening the Narragansett Star Cafe there serving a full coffee menu plus smoothies, soups, salads, sandwiches on homemade bread, bagels, and fresh baked pastries like biscotti, muffins and scones.

Those familiar with the space in its previous uses won't recognize it.

After signing her lease in May, Shubert, 45, spent the next months remaking the site, ripping out walls and worn-out carpeting, raising the ceiling, retiling the floor, and adding bathrooms and a kitchen. She spent so much time in the cafe, she sometimes slept there, camping out in an upstairs loft, which, when open, will be an open mike performance space.

The work shows. The two-level L-shaped space has been completely redone as a welcoming wi-fi cafe that can seat 34 at tables, soft and spacious chairs, and a small couch tucked into an upstairs nook.

The design is all Shubert's, everything from antiqued shutters on the front wall of windows, to spiral cutouts decorating tables and walls, and a scrollwork railing that lines the upper loft. Even the colorful maps decorating the ceiling were made by Shubert from fishing charts that she painted.

Nearly everything within the cafe has been used before and a good number of objects have been assigned entirely new uses.

Shubert said a previous business remodeling homes for resale taught her to find and reuse items people don't want or can no longer use. Since she didn't take a loan out for the new business, she said, designing with refurbished items from defunct restaurants, hotels and shops let her be creative and frugal at the same time.

"I source out things the average person wouldn't use. I try to salvage those," she said.

The cafe's counter, for example, was once an altar at a now demolished church that Shubert topped with granite slabs from a closed Boston store. Cafe tables are fixed to the wall with arched poles made from iron taken from a one-time elevator shaft in Providence, and the menu board was once four backlit signs advertising movies at Circuit City.

Shubert's most cherished piece, a neon sign that says STAR in 2-foot high capital letters, was discovered hanging at a restaurant supply store. Even though it wasn't for sale, Shubert said she convinced the owner to sell it to her after she purchased her restaurant equipment from him. It now hangs over the main counter and has been incorporated into the cafe's name.

A Swansea native, Shubert has tapped her design experience before to create a successful business. Until 2003, she ran a coffee shop from a former Cape Cod Railroad train car that she bought and relocated to Route 6 in Somerset. Called the Fruit and Bagel, the business was thriving when she sold it.

"I loved my coffee shop. I absolutely loved my customers. We had a great time," she said.

A non-compete clause in the sales contract kept Shubert out of the coffee business until last year, when the business was sold again, voiding the contract.

The new cafe, she said, looks exactly as she envisioned it when she first walked through the doors.

"The day I walked in here, I thought this is exactly what I want," she said.

Once open, Shubert said she expects to have about six employees including her daughter, Madison, a 2009 graduate of Fairhaven High School, and two recent graduates of Old Colony Regional Vocational-Technical High School who will help with the baking.

The cafe will use paper products made from biodegradable corn-based materials, she said, adding, "Even my plastic will break down in a landfill."

Once open, Shubert plans to keep revising the space and said she has a vision for the cafe's exterior including a deck with tables and, contingent upon town approval, dog-friendly seating.

A dog owner herself, she said she hopes to install cleats in the ground so, "people can have breakfast with their dog, the way it should be."

Since moving to town three years ago, Shubert said she's gotten to love Fairhaven's beauty and cultural history, but felt it needed a cafe.